Movie Monday: Sweeney Todd

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street


Ah, don’t you love a good musical? Jolly-jolly, feel-good fun-and games, full of cheery cockneys bursting into song at the slightest provocation; fun for all the family! No? Perhaps not. In 2007, Tim Burton took on the challenge of adapting Stephen Sondheim’s classic tale of madness, revenge and pies; a bleak and blood-soaked, yet darkly comic masterpiece, with murders you can really hum.*

I confess, my initial reaction to hearing about this film was to groan and roll my eyes at the casting. Nothing against either Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter, both of whom I have a great respect for, but I felt that the Burton/Depp/Bonham-Carter collaborations were getting a bit beyond a joke. There are other actors in the world, you know. And the trailer didn’t help matters. Depp’s mockney accent was disconcertingly reminiscent of his role as Captain Jack Sparrow. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to shake the loveable rogue from my mind, but his first appearance allayed my fears. The characters may share the accent and cheekbones, but there the resemblance ends. The hatred and sarcasm that infuses every word as he sneers, “There’s no place like London!” is as far from the irrepressible pirate as you can get. In fact, when I saw a clip of a Pirates film recently, it took me a moment to remind myself that it actually was the same actor. Todd’s mind is a dark, bitter place, seen through dead-looking eyes occasionally animated by a crazed spark.

Yet Sondheim’s version of Sweeney Todd is more than just a pantomime psychopath, but a man driven over the edge by injustice, grief and an obsession with revenge. His backstory helps the viewer to understand his motivation and not quite disapprove as much as one might expect. After all: “It’s man devouring man, my dear/and who are we to deny it in here?” I have to say, I agree with Discworld's Sam Vimes, and can't see why anyone would want someone else waving a sharp blade anywhere near their neck in the first place. Especially if one is a creep and a villain who makes enemies like Mrs Lovett makes pies.


There is a stellar cast featuring many Harry Potter veterans – perhaps not surprising as most British actors have featured in that series – all Death Eaters, former Death Eaters or other Dark Wizards. As well as Helena Bonham Carter, we have a gloriously disturbing performance from Alan Rickman as the evil Judge Turpin, and Timothy “Wormtail” Spall as the crawling yes-man Beadle Bamford. Finally, newcomer Jamie Campbell Bower (Gellert Grindelwald) appears as the young romantic hero, whose name refuses to stick in my head and so therefore will be called Pretty Boy forever and always. Campbell Bower had a lovely tenor singing voice, but his facial acting was, shall we say, not quite there yet. I discussed this with my sister during the scenes in which he was caught “gandering” at Sweeney’s daughter by her guardian Judge Turpin.

Me: If Alan Rickman’s Voice was doing that to me, I wouldn’t be looking mildly curious. I wouldn’t need to act; I’d actually be terrified.

Jen: I don’t know; I think this is his "”I’m peeing myself and trying not to look cold and damp” look.

Maybe my heart is as black as Sweeney’s, but I found the love story between Johanna and Pretty Boy rather silly, if not downright Twilight-creepy. Either Pretty Boy is lacking some of his wits, or has a misplaced sense of chivalry, but after being beaten and thrown from the house, he’s promising to “steal you/Johanna!” One wonders whether Johanna is fated to exchange a creepy stalker of sixty for one of sixteen…
Apparently Johnny Depp was nervous about taking a singing role, but he does an admirable job. His singing voice is unpolished, a bit harsh, but full of emotion and always true to the character. He is, after all, an actor first and foremost. Depp leads the cast well, and his voice contrasts nicely with Jamie Campbell Bower’s pure, soaring tenor, and Alan Rickman’s menacing bass.

Helena Bonham Carter playing a messy-haired madwoman might sound very familiar to Harry Potter fans, but her Mrs Lovett is a much more subtle character than Bellatrix Lestrange, motherly and down-to-earth, darkly comic in her deadpan, practical manner after her initial shock at discovering that her lodger has just killed a man. “Seems an awful waste//I mean, with the price of meat what it is when you get it/if you get it…” “Ah!” “Good, you’ve got it…!”

Yes, Sweeney Todd is gory and gruesome, but what can you expect with the subject matter? Despite preparing myself I was quite horrified on my first viewing, but after the first murder, one seems to become somewhat desensitised to most of the blood, right until the final murders which become shocking again. But Sweeney Todd is more than an unashamed splatter-fest, and even the messy moments are quite emotional in their way. Musically, my favourite part is the reprise of “Johanna,” when Sweeney and the Pretty Boy are singing two separate melodies. This song charts Sweeney’s descent into madness, and if you listen to the lyrics – wow, they are heartrending! While he mechanically slashes his way through his clients, he seems to be aware that he is becoming disconnected and out of control, vaguely conscious of his loss of self and purpose and his inevitable fate.

“I think we shall not meet again/my little dove/my sweet/Johanna”

“And though I’ll think of you, I guess, until the day I die/I think I miss you less and less as every day goes by/Johanna!”

Curse you, Stephen Sondheim, we’re not supposed to feel sorry for a barber who murders his clients and turns them into pies!

I’m off to see the stage show in Chichester this week. No Death Eaters in this version, but another Harry Potter veteran whose character was actually even more unpleasant! This version will star Michael Ball as Sweeney Todd and Imelda Staunton playing Mrs Lovett. I can’t wait.



*Maskerade, Terry Pratchett

Paranormalcy, Kiersten White

I'd been vaguely aware of Paranormalcy for a while, from other people's "mailbox" and review posts, but I'll be honest, it really didn't jump out and grab me, probably because of the title. I'd been coming to think the word "paranormal" to be a bit overused, an easy categorisation of an entire genre of books, without anything to say what makes this one different. Also, as a Brit, the word "normalcy" just doesn't sound right, and that, too, might have turned me off. But then, I happened upon author Kiersten White's blog, and after reading a few posts, decided I wanted to see more, went out and bought the book.

Yesterday, I was sorting through my books, picked up Paranormalcy to add to my to-read pile, then flicked it open. I was going to pick up and reread The Princess Bride, but upon opening Paranormalcy, literally from the first line or two, I could not put this book down.

The first chapter was called, "Oh, Bite Me!"

"Wait- did you- You just yawned!" The vampire's arms, raised over his head in the classic Dracula pose, dropped to his sides. He pulled his exaggerated white fangs back behind his lips. "What, imminent death isn't exciting enough for you?""Oh, stop pouting. But really,the widow's peak? The pale skin? The black cape? Where did you even get that thing, a costume store?"

I had to read more. Just one more sentence, to see if it was as funny as the last, and another, to find out what exactly was going on. It didn't take very long to get a clear picture of narrator Evie: Sassy, snarky, exuding attitude, but a girly-girl at heart. She might be employed by the International Paranormal Containment Agency to track down supernatural creatures - vampires, werewolves, faeries, you name it - for monitoring, but despite her unusual life, Evie herself is just a normal teenage girl, who would like nothing better than to be an ordinary high school student with a driving license and a locker. Just because she has the unique ability to see beneath the glamours - magical disguises and illusions - of "paranormals" - doesn't mean she herself is anything but normal.

But then immortal creatures start dropping dead by the dozen, and the person responsible is somehow connected to Evie. They seem to have more in common with each other than any of the other weird and wonderful creatures IPCA is keeping tabs on. Perhaps Evie's not as normal as she thought.

I'm usually wary of fantasy stories set in the real world which have too many different species of impossible creatures, preferring to stick to just one. But Paranormalcy really worked. Although "paranormals" aren't known to most humans, to Evie they're just differently normal. Her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend a faerie, many of her colleagues werewolves, and her new crush Lend is something no one quite knows how to classify. It had a bit of an Eyre Affair feel to me, with its humour and matter-of-fact acceptance of the bizarre. The book launches straight into the action, the world-building being done by immersion rather than exposition, but it is easily picked up and understood.

At first I was a bit surprised that Evie was only sixteen; her bag-and-tag job seemed far too dangerous for one so young. But as we get to know her, she is a very realistic teenager, sometimes a bit bratty but basically likable, funny, obsessed with all things pink and sparkly and her favourite high school soap opera. I found her fascination with all things high school very understandable - I'd have loved to go to an American high school, or a boarding school, just to see how different it was from my own school experience!

Kiersten White has a refreshing take on various different "paranormals" from myth and literature. Her vampires may look suave and seductive, but all Evie sees is walking corpses. Sexy(!) Her friend Lish, the mermaid, lives in a tank of water and can't speak English, so has a computer translate her speech for her. But some of her more imaginative language translates to "bleep," something that Evie picked up. I'm not sure whether "bleep" necessarily worked in this book all the time. I liked the idea of it as an in-joke that turned into a habit, and I certainly think that less is more when it comes to swearing, but it sometimes jarred, if it was at a point of high tension - I'd rather nothing at all than a substitute-swear. But that's a small criticism.

Evie's double, Vivian, was an interesting antagonist that constantly kept me questioning the morality of Evie's world. She was a villain who evoked pity and caused me to wonder whether she was really all that bad, or if there was something in her reasoning. There wasn't a clear-cut black-and-white solution to this tale, which I appreciated.

I've read on other people's reviews that, despite its title, Paranormalcy is more an Urban Fantasy than a Paranormal Romance (which I've translated as meaning that plot and character come first, rather than just being an excuse for the IMBC* mushy stuff.) It is a fun, fast-paced story that had me grinning and turning the pages right the way through. And there was a wonderful jab at Twilight and the like:

Arianna snorted. "Why on earth would a vampire go to high school?"

Why indeed?

*Interchangeable Magical Boyfriend Creature

Persuasion, Jane Austen

There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.

I discovered the works of Jane Austen when I was in my late teens: first Northanger Abbey when I was in the sixth form, followed quickly by the rest through the first year or so at university. Persuasion was my least favourite at first, although I've come to appreciate it more now I'm older. The last of Austen's novels, not published until after her death, Persuasion is a more grown-up tale than her usual social and romantic satires. The cast is older than Austen's usual 17- to 22-year-old heroines; Anne Eliot is twenty-seven and considered by all an old maid. She has experienced life, been disappointed in her dreams and is now making the best of things.

As a young woman, Anne Eliot experienced a whirlwind romance with Frederick Wentworth, an officer in the navy. Advised by a trusted friend that the marriage would be imprudent, Anne broke the engagement, Wentworth's heart and her own. Wentworth went to sea where he made a name and a fortune for himself, while Anne stayed at home with her intolerably snobbish family, putting all the effort in keeping the household running smoothly, and receiving none of the credit. Eight years later, despite Anne's attempt to stop her father and sister from living beyond their means, the Eliots are forced to let out their home, and the new tenants are Captain Wentworth's sister and brother-in-law. Both parties put off their reunion as long as they can, but the inevitable meeting is confirmation for Anne that the passing years have not cooled her love for Captain Wentworth. But what of his feelings? Is this a second chance for the couple to receive their happily-ever-after?

Of course. This is Jane Austen after all. Yet this time the ending doesn't have the usual feel of being a foregone conclusion, and my best friend actually didn't expect it to end well on her first reading. The obstacles between the young lovers are more internal than usual. The first time around, it was the friends' and family's objections that came between Anne and Frederick, which we have seen before in Austen with the Tilneys, the Ferrars, Lady Catherine de Bourgh... you get the picture. The outright snobbery of "NO COMMONER LIKE YOU WILL MARRY MY OFFSPRING," is relatively easily resolved compared with the well-intentioned, "I'm not so sure this is a good idea," of Emma's amateur matchmaking, and here, Lady Russell, Anne's mentor and substitute mother-figure. The difference here is that Lady Russell was successful in her persuasion, and the lovers have to deal with the consequences of this: eight years of anger and hurt on Wentworth's side, and eight years of doubt and regret on Anne's. Most of the scenes containing the former lovers feature very little interaction between them, and yet the tension is palpable. There is a sort of claustrophobia in Anne's acute awareness of Wentworth's every word, every action, and that he, too, is watching her just as closely. The resolution, when at last it comes, is all the sweeter for the book-long wait, and the eight years that preceded the first chapter.

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. I have loved none but you." 

I loudly declare myself to be immune to "the mushy stuff," but Persuasion is a romance that makes me feel swoony, a true, deep and constant love that goes above and beyond most of the stories that are labelled as romance. Persuasion used to be my least favourite Austen novel, but now I suspect it is the best.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender

Today I bring to you another selection from the Richard and Judy Book Club. This week's review title has been on my to-read pile for a while.

Jusst before her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein discovers she can taste the emotions of everyone who has had a hand in making her food - a weird quirk that is much more of a curse than it sounds, because like food, humans are a complex creation with far more going on inside them than it appears on the outside. The worst thing for Rose is when she eats homemade food as she finds out far more than she ought about her closest loved ones. The lemon cake of the title, baked by her jolly and creative mother, tastes empty. Incomplete. 

The book follows Rose through her childhood as she tries to live a normal life with this curse. Too many people   contribute towards the simplest sandwich, which means every bite Rose eats is a whirlwind of conflicting feelings. It's heartbreaking to see such an essential and normally enjoyable part of life being a burden to a small girl. She also has to deal with her family's secrets. To an outsider, they are a rather average family, each member having their "little ways" but nothing out of the ordinary. Her dad is a very normal, all-American family man and businessman, her brother Joseph showing signs of something like Autism/Asberger's - a scientific genius who has no social skills and does not get the recognition at school he deserves. Mom, the main cook of the family, despite her cheerful exterior, is unfulfilled, disappointed, and Rose can tell instantly from the taste of her cooking when she embarks upon an affair with a colleague. 

I found the first half of the novel to be very readable magic realism, a fascinating concept that was written in such a way as to make you really appreciate food, family and feelings. These things are portrayed as varied, sometimes contradictory, all mixed up together to give a great impression of the unique way in which Rose views the world - an impressive feat. 

In part two of the novel, when our characters are several years older, Bender focuses more upon Joseph, Rose's elder brother. He is still unsocial to the point of reclusiveness, and now he has his own apartment, gives the family much cause for concern by frequently disappearing without explanation. When his mystery is solved, I felt that the book became something else, moving away from the magical realism to become just plain surreal, and I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. I came to understand what Aimee Bender was aiming for, but did not think she was entirely successful.

Still, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a fascinating, original concept which explores what it means to be human. The small cast is brought to life well, leaving me really feeling that I had got to know Rose, her family and friends inside out. The writing is beautiful and rich, but I was left feeling as though something was missing from the story, that I couldn't quite place.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

With its simple cover illustrated with an old black-and-white photograph, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children can be immediately identified as a strange, spooky book. Apart from the lack of fancy artwork or graphics, there seems to be something a bit uncanny about the girl. Perhaps it's just the obvious oldness of the picture, being blurry, unfocused, not sharp like modern photography. Maybe it's the title. Perhaps it's the fact that the little girl's feet are not quite touching the ground...

Miss Peregrine is a unique book in that author Ransom Riggs has illustrated his eerie fantasy story with real vintage photographs found and rescued by collectors; photographs that, like the girl on the cover, seem not quite right. The photographs themselves are fascinating, and I would have happily bought this book for them alone. But around the photo collection, Riggs has woven a dark, twisted narrative based around an orphanage that is not as it seems.

After the death of his beloved grandfather, American teenager Jacob goes to an island off Wales. He hopes to see the children's home where his grandfather spent the war years after his escape from the Nazis in mainland Europe. What Jacob discovers, at first, is a ruin. No one has lived in Miss Peregrine's Home for decades. As he explores deeper, he discovers stranger truths about Miss Peregrine and the children in her care than he could ever have dreamed of.

This book drew me in straight away, with a strong character in Jacob's grandfather, and the mystery of his death, and his past life. The ruined orphanage is a classic gothic ruined house, thick with atmosphere and unfinished business, on the borderline between uncanny-unexplained and fantasy. I felt that the book was at its best at this point, before the secret of Miss Peregrine's was made clear. Even when the truth began to unfold, I was impressed with the originality and unexpected explanation of a ghostly situation.

However, once the scene had been set and the story started to get under way, I confess I found myself losing interest. I felt that Miss Peregrine became less remarkable when the danger, the villains and monsters, were identified. The genre seemed to switch from atmospheric ghost story (of a sort) to a much more generic teen fantasy adventure, and it lost its grip on me. It is set up for the possibility of a sequel, but I feel it would be more effective if it were kept concise and unique.

A Little Stranger - Candia McWilliam

When Daisy needs a nanny for her toddler son, she thinks 22-year-old Margaret Pride is perfect: sensible if a little old-fashioned and reserved, firm but immediately beloved by the child. Yet as the new nanny becomes established in the household, her behaviour doesn't always quite add up, and it becomes apparent that Margaret is not all she seems.

Perhaps I was influenced by having read the back blurb of the book, but from the very first pages I did not trust Margaret. Although narrator Daisy describes her in positive terms: "pretty," "warm," "eager to please," Margaret's own actions and words come across as stiff, stuffy and unnatural. Her first words are a firm triple negative: "No. Never. Not at all." She says "I am," and "I do not" instead of the more natural-sounding "I'm" and "I don't," and her emphasis on neatness - wanting to wear a uniform to work, shunning jeans - makes her seem much older than her young age. These small details, though subtle, put a distance between Margaret and the reader. She never quite seems comfortable, and as such, I never felt comfortable around her. As the book progresses, Margaret's behaviour seems strange, sometimes suspicious, but Daisy seems completely oblivious. I found myself wanting to shout at the narrator for not seeing through her nanny's facade.

McWilliam sets many parallels between the two women. Daisy, after all, used to be used as a nickname for Margaret, and as Margaret weasels her way into the heart of the household, Daisy retreats from the family. Margaret takes on a role as substitute mother for John, and mistress of the house. And it's not only Margaret who isn't all she seems. Daisy, in her seeming oblivion, is an unreliable narrator, and we learn more from what she shows, rather than what she tells us.

A Little Stranger is an intriguing book with a menacing atmosphere. At 145 pages, it is more of a novella than a novel, yet it still took me a while to read. It is long enough for Daisy to spend chapters navel-gazing, reflecting upon her past, and much of the prose is heavily tinted in purple. I felt at times that McWilliam tried too hard to be "literary." Daisy's world seems very old-fashioned, set in an upper middle-class home with nannies and other servants. Except for a few references to (for example) cassette tapes, I would have place this story in the early 20th century, between the wars.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Unreviewed books

I've kept this blog for three years now, but only in the last year have I been updating it regularly, posting reviews of most of my reading material - but not all. If I don't review a book, it doesn't necessarily mean that I didn't like it; on the contrary, there are several books I've loved so much that I just haven't been able to do them justice. In other cases, I feel that a review would be just an inferior rehash of the book's synopsis and a "This is great! Read it!"

Top Ten Tuesdays are a weekly blog feature held at The Broke and the Bookish, and this week the challenge is to list ten of the books we'd love to share with other bibliophiles, but which for one reason or another we haven't reviewed.



1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak. The story of a little girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Narrated by Death. Beautiful, eye-opening and heartbreaking.

2. The Help - Kathryn Stockett. This novel has recently been turned into a film which is now (USA) or soon (UK) showing in cinemas. Three women in 1960s Mississippi unite to challenge people not just to accept "the way things are" but to really think about their attitudes towards race, primarily, as well as class and gender.

3. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A Cult classic, written by two great names in modern fantasy, before they were really famous, Good Omens shows the bumbling efforts of Aziraphale (angel) and Crowley (an angel who did not fall so much as saunter vaguely downwards) to prevent Armageddon. Hilarious and quotable, with a brilliant cast of characters, Good Omens is fun to play "guess-who-wrote-which-bit" with. (Apparently even they aren't quite sure.)

4. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters. With deliberate parallels to Oliver Twist, this page-turner keeps you guessing and brings to life the murky underworld of Victorian England.

5. The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan. A quirky family story set in 1950s Wales, told by an imaginative 12-year-old who takes it upon herself to investigate the disappearance of a local man, opening up more cans of worms than anyone could have foreseen.

6. Crow Lake - Mary Lawson. Another family story, this time Canadian. Not a lot really happens, to be honest, but it's a story with characterisation strong enough for that not to matter. A short read, maybe 200 pages or so, but one which really draws you into the family's world.

7. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter fans will know of at least one of the fairy tales, as it is a critical part of the final novel. There are five fairy tales in all, simple but flawless - and one rather gruesome one! The book is enhanced by explanatory notes on each tale from Professor Albus Dumbledore himself, and his musings are typically whimsical yet philosophical.

8. The Company of Liars - Karen Maitland. The year is 1348, and a band of misfits travel across England, trying to avoid the Black Plague. Many are on the run, all have strange tales to tell, but can they trust each other? This book ended on a twist which led me to want to read it all over again, to see if the new knowledge would change the way I read it.

9. The Distant Hours - Kate Morton. Ms Morton has written three novels now, and has pretty well established a recogniseable pattern of family tales, linked through the generations. This doesn't mean her stories are formulaic, though. Far from it! The Distant Hours is a modern gothic tale with all the best parts of such a story: an old house, mysterious sisters bound together by their past, and at the heart of it all, another story.

10. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series - Alexander McCall Smith. This is a lovely, cosy series of books set in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe's cases may not be dramatic compared to a New York detective, but every one is taken seriously, because every case is important to the person who is asking for help. McCall Smith writes which such a love for the country and characters, and the series has a gentle, innocent feel to it that is hard to find in adult fiction nowadays. This is a series I go to for a light, feel-good read, and can easily get through one book in an afternoon or evening.

The Annotated Alice - Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner

I've always had a faint, guilty suspicion that I don't like Alice in Wonderland quite as much as I ought. Even as a little girl I felt that that, as a story, it didn't quite work, didn't flow right, that there must be some deeper layers of meaning just out of my reach - not that I would have phrased it like that in those days. If asked, I'd probably have shrugged and muttered something about it being "a bit weird" or even "boring." I liked the Disney film well enough, although it wasn't my favourite, but the book didn't seem like a children's book. Whatever the reason, somehow I didn't quite get it. Coming back to the book as an adult last year (in preparation for watching Tim Burton's Johnny Depp in Wonderland) and reading it with my book-clevers, I didn't like not understanding.

By this point, I'd twigged that Wonderland was a dream story with cards thrown in, and that Through The Looking Glass was either a metaphor or a novelisation of a chess game - again, in a dream. But even so, I often had the feeling that Lewis Carroll was cross-referencing other works, Victorian culture and in-jokes, but  I didn't know what and couldn't quite work it out for myself. And I couldn't be havin' with that. Enter The Annotated Alice, a work which strives to unlock some of the mysteries under the surface of what cannot be denied is a very surreal story.

Now, I have to point out that The Annotated Alice is not for everyone. I know many who love the story uncomplicated by analysis or explanation, and that to look below the surface would spoil the magic. I have full sympathy for that! My brain, though, is cursed with an ardent curiosity and "wanting to know," probably as a result of my years of literary studies. I refused to study the Children's Literature module at university because insider information hinted that the class had the potential destroy books that have been part of me from childhood, going for shock over believable interpretations. And the notes for The Annotated Alice are not entirely free from fanciful speculation - did Carroll really intend the word "little" to be a pun on "Liddell"? (the real Alice's surname.) I'm inclined to believe he chose it because he meant "small" when he wanted to say something that meant "small." The annotator overuses the words "possibly," and "maybe" and "Carroll could be referring to..." Some of these links are tenuous to say the least, although there are lots of interesting snatches of information that make sense of the odd line here or there.

However, Martin Gardner, the annotator, also explains mathematical, political and scientific references that I wouldn't have otherwise understood, and draws attention to the patterns within the story. Reading Alice more closely, I came to realise just how the stories work with dream-logic. "She woke up to find it had all been a dream," is one of the big no-nos of storytelling these days, but Alice is the exception in being a very realistic portrayal of how dreams work - with things changing from one thing to another and this not seeming strange at all. Through the Looking Glass is much  more sophisticated than Wonderland, with its logic conforming very closely to chess rules - kings moving one step at a time, knights being a little wobbly, queens rushing about all the time, and at the same time portraying a back-to-front world as it might well work the other side of a mirror. The cake must be passed around before it can be cut, the White Queen screams in pain until she jabs herself with a pin, and then is quite calm because "I've done all the screaming already [...] What would be the good of having it all over again?"


My other edition of the Alice books isn't illustrated, but The Annotated Alice contains the original drawings by John Tenniel, and Gardner points out the little details in these pictures which show how closely the author and illustrator worked together. Note the illustration of the shop Alice visits: it is based upon a real shop on St Aldate's, Oxford (which I visited earlier this week) but Tenniel has been careful to reverse the image, if you see the position of the window and door, this really is the Looking Glass version of the shop. (The counter, too, is the other way round in the real shop.)

I don't expect The Annotated Alice will by my usual reading copy, but I'm glad to have read it, and it really did make more sense of the books by drawing my attention to details I'd never noticed before. Chances are that most people have figured out a lot without help from annotations. Other people, as I've said before, are quite happy with the book as a dreamlike nonsense fantasy without needing the details spelled out for them. I wouldn't recommend this book for everyone, but if the mysteries of Alice are frustratingly elusive, it's worth looking into.

The Considine Curse, Gareth P, Jones

I don't often buy books on impulse, and I rarely buy books from the 9-12 age group, but in Waterstone's the other day I made an exception for The Considine Curse. The story of a "very normal" Australian teenager who goes to visit her strange cousins in England after the death of their grandmother, it looked like a cross between the Addams family and the Lemony Snicket books. Mariel's cousins are very close, many of them hostile to outsiders, and although they share the same grandmother, they don't consider Mariel to be one of them. Mariel's mother didn't even tell her she had any family, and as she gets to know them, Mariel can see why! Only now her mother wants to take her away from her home, school and friends. Mariel does not approve.

The Considine cousins are certainly a strange bunch, each with their own characteristics. Lily and Amelia are strange but seem friendly enough, but Oberon is threatening, and eight-year-old Elspeth is one of the creepiest children I've come across in fiction, oozing malevolence and speaking only in sinister rhyme, hinting at a terrible fate in store for Mariel. I guessed at the family's secret early on, but this did not spoil the story for me, although one piece of foreshadowing came across as too heavy-handed and unnecessary. The story is a great mix of a page-turning family mystery and a gothic undercurrent that gets darker and more dangerous as the story goes along.

I was quite shocked at the level of bloodthirstiness for a book aimed at pre-teens, but what I found more disturbing was the ending. I think it was supposed to be a happy ending, but it was rather bittersweet and a somewhat morally dubious. Although as an adult I don't mind stories with "untidy" conclusions, if I had read this book when I was ten or eleven, I would have been concerned about the decisions Mariel took. Her story may have ended pretty well, but I would have been - and was, a bit - troubled about the wider-reaching consequences for the family and community. Perhaps I think too much. Still, The Considine Curse is an enjoyable, intriguing and creepy read.

Villette, Charlotte Bronte

I first encountered Charlotte Bronte as a pre-teen, when for some reason or other I watched the Lowood scenes in rehearsal at the local theatre. Being at the time fascinated with boarding school stories, the play encouraged me to try out the novel, but it was only on my fourth attempt when I was about fourteen that I actually read past Jane's childhood and onto the end. This novel has been described as an essential part of any girl's journey to womanhood, but little is known about Charlotte Bronte's other works. As part of the Bronte Sisters challenge, I decided to read Villette, a novel I knew little about other than it was supposed to be Charlotte's best work.

The novel follows the fortunes of Lucy Snowe, a young woman with no money and no family. What Lucy does have by the bucketload is resilience, strength of character, and courage, possibly to the point of recklessness. A Victorian young lady leaves England for the fictional city of Villette, unaccompanied, with no knowledge of French and no job, friends or relations when she gets there (as far as she knows.) Is she insane? Nevertheless, she quickly finds herself a position at a private school, first teaching the younger girls, then becoming English teacher for the whole school.

Lucy is a fascinating, but not always likable protagonist. It took me a good part of the book to be able to establish what her character is; she is quiet but forceful, often compared to a shadow. She is secretive even from the reader, more than once knowing more than she lets on until she decides to make a revelation. Lucy takes no nonsense and very sure of her own rightness. Her attitudes can come across as arrogant and judgemental, and she is particularly anti-Catholic which adds to her isolation as the only Protestant in the school.

Despite it being quite a challenging read, I got through Villette quickly. It is full of complex characters: the vain, coquettish Ginevra Fanshawe - who, despite all her faults, one can't quite bring oneself to dislike - sweet, precocious Polly and the devious, underhanded headmistress Madame Beck. There are two potential love interests in Lucy's life. Dr John, AKA Graham Bretton, son of Lucy's godmother, is the more conventional romantic hero: handsome, charming, friendly and generally decent. His relationship with his mother is heartwarming and amusing, full of good-natured banter. The other is M. Paul Emmanuel, a far more complex character: quick-tempered, passionate, opinionated and frequently rude, but he is full of compassion for the poor, the lowly, the underdog. He and Lucy clash frequently, but she is his equal and won't let him walk over her. He is a good character, yet I found his rudeness quite shocking, especially when I tried to imagine his modern-day equivalent. If he sees Lucy talking to another man, or dressing prettily - read, in a pale pink dress, rather than grey - he calls her all sorts of names, flirt, coquette, vain - Lucy Snowe, one of the most puritanical characters in literature! Imagine how well that would go down in real life, today. It would be considered abusive rather than eccentric foreign outspokenness, surely?

The book is quite hard-going, not least because there are large portions of untranslated French dialogue. I studied the language until I was 18, so I could follow most of it, but it might be better to read a Penguin or Oxford World Classics edition, as these tend to have footnotes or endnotes. It is a somewhat melancholy book, a tale of loneliness, disappointment and hope, and Victorian repression. Charlotte Bronte vividly describes the workings of a mind under attack from depression, of the physical pain from emotional turmoil, and the scenes in which Lucy ventures out at night after being drugged with opiates take on a surreal, fairylike tone, in which which her senses are intensified until everything seems brighter and more real than day-to-day life. Quite apart from subplot about a local ghost story that seems to fit better into an Ann Radcliffe romance, the narration is filled with the borderline-gothic atmosphere that is characteristic of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Take this scene in which Lucy reflects upon a former unrequited love:

"Was this feeling dead? I do not know, but it was buried. Sometimes I thought the tomb unquiet, and dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and of hair, still golden and living, obtruded through coffin-chinks."

Read for the Bronte Sisters challenge

Villette's ending is ambiguous and comes upon the reader suddenly and hard. Once more, Lucy Snowe conceals the full story from the reader, leaving it open to interpretation whether it she has her happy-ever-after or not. I've a pretty good idea which is the true ending, but either way, it seems quite a let-down to have followed this character from childhood, through 650 pages of hardship, happiness, despair and hard-earned reward, only to have this ending withheld, and wrapped up in a handful of sentences. Yet, it seems a remarkably modern conclusion, and not actually out of place in this clever, thoughtful piece of literature. If Jane Eyre has been helping girls to come of age, Villette is its sadder, wiser and more mature sister.